1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus for processing document data described in a predetermined structured description language utilizing such document data and externally entered print setting information, a server apparatus capable of communication with such image processing apparatus, an image processing method and a program therefor.
2. Related Background Art
Rapid popularization of the personal computers and the internet in recent years has accelerated the shift of documents to electronic ones in every fields. However, since the data format of the electronic document depends on the application used for editing the document information, it is required, in order to view the document information in the electronic form, to support an application supporting the data format of such document information. Also there are becoming popular the documents described in a structured description language not dependent on a specific application, such as HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) or XML (extensible Markup Language).
The structured description language, represented by these languages, is designed primarily for display on a display image by an application in which the information viewing software or so-called browser or various HTML is supported, and lacks the concept of page. In case of display with the browser, the concept of page is unnecessary because it is possible to arbitrarily change the width or the height of the displayed image or to scroll the displayed image. On the other hand, in case of using the structured description language as a page description language, there is required page allotment, and the present invention is to meet such requirement.
A step of converting a structured description language without the concept of page into a structured description language capable of page layout is called formatting. However, if the formatting into a physical page in fixed manner with an absolute scale such as a font size, there may be encountered a drawback that the page becomes not well legible depending on its content or that the layout does not match the taste of the user. The physical page means an output page obtained by printing image data on paper. Also the physical page includes a page outputted on a display of a host computer or the like by previewing the print data. Also in printing the structured document, a method of designating the font size with a HTML editor or a web browser in a personal computer is associated with a drawback that the document has to be once received by the host equipment, then opened by the application and subjected to cumbersome operations on the application in order to achieve designation of the font.
In recent years, there are developed applications for editing the web browser and the HTML file, and it is made possible to designate the font size by the input means of a personal computer (PC) on the HTML document displayed by the application and executing page layout on the PC for transmission to a printer. However there remains a drawback that the base font size in the structured document can be set by the aforementioned font size designation but the font size of the characters designated individually by the author of the document cannot be changed. For example a technology of dividing a page into a table area and a text area and designating different font magnification rates respectively for these areas is incapable of obtaining a document with easily legible characters by unconditionally designating the font size at a specified size or larger.
Also there is known a technology in which, in executing page layout of a document, a program calculates the magnification rate of the font applied to a page separated into the table area and the text area according to a predetermined algorithm thereby achieving layout. More specifically, there is known a technology which, in a table area, reduces the black area on a condition that the character train contained in the entry of the table is not split into a new line, thereby enlarging the font so as to increase the print area. Also, in case the font of the text area is enlarged, there increases the proportion of the print area contained in a page. Therefore the font size of such text area is enlarged in such a manner that the print area becomes equal to or larger than a predetermined proportion. However, such enlargement of font depends on thestate of layout and the output is not necessarily executed in the font size designated by the user. For example, in case of print data with an originally large proportion of print area, such as a large table containing small characters, the program does not enlarge the font even if the characters are outputted with a small font size. Thus since too much emphasis is given to the proportion of the print area, there cannot be obtained the output with the font size desired by the user.